Trump’s decision to re-impose sanctions has placed the Iran nuclear agreement on life support and further destabilised the region. Unwilling to seriously support the deal, Europeans will have to rely on diplomacy to limit the damage.

EU-Turkey relations have deteriorated sharply in recent years, and even maintaining transactional co-operation could become increasingly difficult. The challenge for Europe is how to prevent relations from souring further.

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Trade in services has not received enough attention in the Brexit debate. But if Theresa May follows through on plans for the UK to leave the single market, UK services exports to the EU-27 will likely fall, in the case of financial services by more than half, and related jobs and tax revenues will suffer.

Trump’s decision to re-impose sanctions has placed the Iran nuclear agreement on life support and further destabilised the region. Unwilling to seriously support the deal, Europeans will have to rely on diplomacy to limit the damage.

The election of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as the new leader of the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party suggests there will not be any immediate shift in Germany’s lukewarm approach to French proposals for eurozone reform if she also succeeds Angela Merkel as Chancellor.

Theresa May's deal on Brexit is heading for defeat in Parliament. That could lead to no deal, the negotiation of a different deal, a general election, a second referendum – or MPs swallowing the package at the second attempt.

Not necessarily, says Charles Grant, the well-plugged-in head of the Centre for European Reform. Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and perhaps Germany may want to help, Grant says, perhaps adding “some tinsel and coloured lights” to various EU loopholes on migration, so that remain can boast of having reformed free movement. But the more “hardcore federalists” in the commission, and in France, “have mixed feelings about our departure. For decades, we’ve been the pebble in their shoe. We’ve been such a bloody pain” that some will be relieved when we’ve gone.

The Centre for European Reform said in 2016 that “Britain’s eurosceptics have spent years frightening people with the idea of an EU army”, and that “conspiracy-minded Brexiters insist that, were the UK to stay in the European Union, British troops might soon be faced with conscription into a Brussels-controlled army”.

John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based research institute, said that the size of the vote against her “is an even clearer signal that she won’t be able to get her deal through Parliament, and makes it even more likely that when she puts the deal to the vote she will lose that.”

"Some EU capitals are not perfectly happy with some aspects of this deal, including the final shape of the backstop," said Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

"She's almost certain to face the challenge," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a London think tank. "The only consequence of postponing of her Brexit vote is to weaken May's authority several notches further than it already has been."

On the subject of a referendum, Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, now sees that as more likely than any of the other possible resolutions to the Brexit crisis. "My take on Brexit probabilities. UK leaves with no deal, 15% chance. Parliament finally passes May's deal, slightly modified with EU 'assurances', 20%. Or it passes the deal with new political declaration sketching Norway, 20%. General election, 15%. Referendum, 30%."

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform (CER) suggested May would only secure "very minor changes to her deal". "The substance of the Irish backstop will be unaltered. So I very much doubt that parliament will vote for the deal, when it has the chance to do so," he said.

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said "It would be naive to think that the other 27 EU member states would be open" to substantial changes to the backstop and wider exit plan after months of fractious back-and-forth negotiations.

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform think tank said he thinks the upper limit of any extension could be “mid-May” because of the upcoming European Parliament election, but in extremis the EU could be flexible. “Britain’s seats in the European Parliament have already been reallocated and it would be legally complicated to keep the U.K. in the EU beyond the elections,” Grant wrote in a blog for the CER. “But if the EU really wanted to prolong British membership by several months, there could be ways around the European Parliament problem; for example, the U.K. could appoint MPs as MEPs on an interim basis.”